Developer Daedalic Entertainment and publisher Nacon brought to life Lord of the Rings: Gollum. An action-adventure game where you are playing from the perspective of Gollum. An interesting choice to say the least but it was enough to catch my attention. As a Lord of the Rings fan, I was interested in seeing some more of Gollum’s story. Let’s see how they translated this from an idea into a story.

Story

As the title suggests, the story follows Gollum throughout the entirety of the game. Gollum and Smeagol are arguing over what flowers they used to smell when their banter is interrupted by an awakening where you are trapped in a cell. Where an Elvish King and a wizard that turns out to be Gandalf enter to question Gollum about his whereabouts. Gollum shares his story which starts about 60 years after his encounter with Bilbo Baggins.  

Gollum had started in the Misty Mountains following Bilbo east towards the Lonely Mountains but the voice of Sauron in his head drew him away from his pursuit and this led him South to Mordor. You start in some caves in Cirith Ungol where his hideout is located with some finger paintings on the wall that depict his previous encounters. While wandering the caves, Gollum notices some crows spying on him, and in a pursuit to kill the spies, you sneak past an Orc patrol and meet Shelob the spider who is apparently Gollum’s friend. Smeagol is intrigued by a beetle, but Gollum thinks that it is also a spy and “we must kills it.” After the argument is concluded you are spotted by a Nazgul and chased until you take cover in a nearby cave to no escape because you’re surrounded and taken to Sauron. Where poor Gollum is tortured for information, and you find out that Baggins has the precious in the Shire. 

After being tortured Gollum is thrown into an underground Orc slave camp. Here is where the chore simulator starts, you’re put through more than enough mind-numbing tasks. During this time, you’re talking with your cellmate who is “showing you the ropes” yet is doing absolutely nothing to help you with each task. After gaining your cellmate’s trust he tells you of some possible escape routes and Gollum sneaks off to gain some intel on said routes. Eventually, you're sent off to do more tasks the “Candle Man” seems pleased by your work and takes you to be a spy for the slave camp. Gollum is trapped in this camp for years - don’t worry it’s not real-time. 

All throughout Gollum has one goal, find the nasty Baggins who has the precious. Gollum is doing all of this for the precious. You are then taken out of the memories and are back in another call but in Elvish territory where you are also trying to escape. But because he has information about the whereabouts of the ring, the Mouth of Sauron informs the Candle Man that Gollum must either be recovered or killed. Gollum does anything he needs to do to get to the precious. Here you’ll need to make some tough decisions to get you to your specific ending which will depend on the way you play the game. 

Gameplay

Lord of the Rings: Gollum is an action-adventure game, or so it says in the description. To me, it feels more like a chore simulator with a couple of really dragged-out stealth “puzzles.” It seems that every part of the chapter comes with three separate parts. First, go do this mundane task, then go on this short stealth puzzle, and after you’re done with that go on this really long parkour journey that has no reward at the end.

The game consists of two major aspects, stealth and platforming or climbing. Throughout the game, you will crawl around quietly to sneak past enemies or climb walls to avoid enemies. You will find walls that you can scale and ledges to grab onto.

There really isn’t any combat in the game, if you sneak up behind certain enemies you’re able to subdue them in a very unsatisfying bout. The only real conflict that you experience is fighting yourself when moving the camera around to keep it in the best position. Sometimes the camera controls don’t bother me, but a lot of the time during my experience the camera moves all too slowly, and it rarely seems to be in the right position at the right time.

One part of the game that I do like is the inner dialog conflict that Gollum and Smeagol have. At certain points in the game, you get to decide whether you want to play as Gollum or Smeagol. Now if you choose to play as whichever name is lit up green, that’s that and the game continues, but say Gollum’s name is green and I choose to side with Smeagol, there will be an argument between the two that plays out the same way that Gollum talks to himself.

Audio and Visual

Where do I start… this game has terrible graphics. I played it on the Xbox Series X and thankfully I did because the PC port requires a really strong rig to run it on decent graphics. But, even playing it on the Xbox Series X, the graphics are nowhere near acceptable for a game of this sort in 2023. Gollum has a horrible design from his eyes that are just lifeless, to his hair-do that seemingly is supposed to make him seem “younger” but it just throws me off.

The colors in this game are a horrid choice. Everything is a shade of brown, everything is dark, and EVERYTHING has a really bright light somewhere that just ensures that everything is disgustingly underlit while being overlit at the same time.

The voice acting isn’t the worst thing in this game, but back to the visuals. I’ve seen better lip movement and facial expressions from games that are much less taxing. The facial expressions are so plain that I half expected it to be silent and have to read text for dialog. What I can say that I enjoyed, is the score for when there is supposed to be major tension. The beginning of the game is a good example, as you are being hunted by a pack of Wraiths and as they get closer to you the score is actually terrifying. It made me want to escape and not for the reasons the rest of the game does.

Replayability

Technically speaking, there is replayability here. There are collectibles to find in each mission if you are the type to collect in video games. But the real replayability comes from the four different endings. I’m not totally sure what changes in the game to create the different endings, but I assume that it has to do with whether you decide to side with Smeagol or Gollum.

What It Could Have Done Better

Oh boy, let’s start by saying “a lot.” The game needs work from top to bottom. The game has some very ugly visuals with the character design and the colors chosen; they made it a muddy mess. Some simple lighting changes could have fixed this problem. Sticking with visuals, the character models and the way they interacted should have either been a text dialog game or they needed to do some improvement on the facial expressions because I’ve seen better face models in games that are 10+ years old. The game also lags a lot, during cutscenes and gameplay, and it doesn’t matter what is going on - it’s just laggy. There would be times I would be walking somewhere that Gollum could clearly stand or walk without issue and the game would glitch out and throw me off a cliff or just rubberband me somewhere else.

For the gameplay aspects, the game is repetitive. The beginning part of the game while you are a prisoner, it feels like it is literally a chore simulator. “Go grab this for me prisoner!” is essentially what the first part of the game is over and over again. The platforming parts of the game seemed fine at first but the further into the game you go, they don’t get harder, they just get longer. Length does not equal difficulty. There were more times than I could count that I was begging to be at the end of a platforming section because it felt like it was going on for hours. Then the worst part of all, the game crashes. Again, a lot, the game crashed for me at least once or twice during each chapter while playing on an Xbox Series X with the game installed on internal storage with plenty of available space. Too many times I was deep into a platforming part of a mission just to get booted back to my Xbox home screen and have to pray that I didn’t have to do it all over again.

Verdict

Taking a swan dive into Mount Doom sounds like more fun than this game. It’s not good, it’s not ready to be released and frankly, if it were ready I still don’t think it would be fun. The graphics are subpar, especially for the year that we are in and the technology that we have. The gameplay has been done before in much better ways, and simple tweaks could have improved the game but instead, it’s a lifeless pile of mud. The things the game does decently are outshined by the things the game desperately needs work on. I went into this as a Lord of the Rings fan, interested in a Gollum backstory with some hope that it could be a fun game. In the end, it was not worth it and I would not recommend this to anybody no matter how bored you are, even though it is slightly below the normal game price. I wouldn’t even suggest it if it were free.

Lord of the Rings: Gollum is available now for PC via Steam, and Epic Games Store. It is also available for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4.